My name is Marissa Alexander, I am a mother of three children, but at the present time, I am not able to be with them due to the following circumstances. I am currently sitting in the Pretrial Detention Facility in Jacksonville FL, Duval County awaiting a sentence for three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon with no intent to harm. … In an unprovoked jealous rage, my husband violently confronted me while using the restroom. He assaulted me, shoving, strangling and holding me against my will, preventing me from fleeing all while I begged for him to leave. … I was unable to leave, trapped in the dark with no way out. For protection against further assault I retrieved my weapon; which is registered and I have a concealed weapon permit. Trapped, no phone, I entered back into my home to either leave through another exit or obtain my cell phone. … The weapon was in my right hand down by my side and he yelled, “Bitch I will kill you!”, and charged toward me. In fear and desperate attempt, I lifted my weapon up, turned away and discharged a single shot in the wall up in the ceiling. As I stood my ground it prevented him from doing what he threatened and he ran out of the home. Outside of the home, he contacted the police and falsely reported that I shot at him and his sons. The police arrived and I was taken into custody.
— Excerpt from A Letter by Marissa Alexander to her supporters
As part of National Domestic Violence Awareness month, we were joined in-studio by Esther Armah, founder and Creator of Emotional Justice Unplugged, and co-founder of #31forMarissa, with Mariame Kaba of the Chicago Taskforce on Violence Against Girls & Women. Ms. Armah discussed the cultures of silence within our communities around domestic violence, particularly amongst men. For more information:
#31ForMarissa Coverage at Ebony
Read the Letters at The Swag Spot
Donate to Marissa Alexander’s Legal Fees
For updates and more information, you can also follow @PrisonCulture and @esther_armah
Also on today’s #TWiBRadio, #TeamBlackness discussed New Jersey finally getting something right and Eminem getting everything wrong.
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And this morning on #amTWiB, The Morning Crew discussed the Obama Administration taking heat for the glitchy Obamacare registration, breast feeding and an abortion may be used against you, and is Biggie too much for a street name?
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Roger Moore
Ms. Alexander would have been much better off shooting her husband dead and using a Stand Your Ground defense, since that would have eliminated the best witness against her and guaranteed he wouldn’t continue to bother her. I think it’s crazy that’s true, but that’s the law.
Betty Cracker
I’ve read that Ms. Alexander has won a new trial because of an error in the jury instructions, but she won’t be able to invoke “Stand Your Ground.” I don’t know why. I believe I also read that, unlike George Zimmerman, Ms. Alexander didn’t have an arrest record prior to the incident. She got 20 years because of laws that were sold as a way to “get tough on criminals who use guns” with mandatory sentences. Meanwhile, Zimmerman walks even though he shot and killed an unarmed kid.
Svensker
Awful and crazy. Hope it works out for her.
ruemara
@Betty Cracker: This. This bullshit right here.
Cassidy
@Betty Cracker: She got twenty years for being black and a woman and not taking her beating like man.
LanceThruster
@Roger Moore:
Sadly, I think you are most likely correct.
Yatsuno
@Cassidy: Sigh. This. But can’t let them blahs get too fair a shake. They might want rights and shit.
rikyrah
Never ever needed to ask the question as to whether Marissa was Black…
knew the answer to this question immediately
rikyrah
hope it’s clear….Stand Your Ground applies to White people.
jenn
I just deleted a long screed. I’m not happy with warning shots in urban areas, so I can see some sort of investigation about that. But she was the embodiment of what the Castle Doctrine and Stand your Ground were supposed to be for. And the idea that she gets 20 years for this is a massive miscarriage of justice. I hope her appeal does better.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
Because she didn’t kill him. If she had, Florida’s SYG law would have applied. Since he was only frightened (not even wounded), she gets a harsher sentence than if she’d killed him. That’s how your self-defense laws are set up in Florida.
And, yes, I guarantee you that if she had been a white, middle-class woman, she wouldn’t have spent so much as a night in jail for this.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
If the black man involved kills another minority, sometimes he can successfully claim SYG, at least according to the database kept by the Tampa Bay Times. But if he kills a white person, or it’s a black woman who kills someone? Yeah, good luck.
satby
It’s just a travesty. I hope her new trial results in justice this time. She should be home with her children.
Villago Delenda Est
Of course she won’t be able to invoke “Stand Your Ground”. That law ONLY applies to white male straight Christian types, and is a way for them to legally kill anyone who dares to offend them in any way.
No one else has any rights. Period.
Drexciya
I typically balk at having discussions about gendered issues focus on the perpetrators, but I wanted to highlight this excellent discussion that used #31ForMarissa as a starting point to engage in a critical analysis of masculinity, masculinized gendered roles, domestic violence and how assertions of a gendered hierarchy can contribute to the thoughts that become expressed through physical and verbal violence against women. While I have very complicated opinions of a blanket perception of “male privilege” when applied to a black context and even more complicated opinions of the applicability of claiming that assertive power dynamics exist in those racialized contexts, complicity with a societally imposed patriarchal norm that gets expressed through sexism, misogyny and misogynoir is absolutely in the purview of black male experience.
To respond, black men as men need to construct more than rules that start and stop at “don’t hit women,” and there needs to be a general understanding that those roles were not intended for and are unfit for black people’s societal place. So I welcome black men who adopt – as their responsibility – an affirmative stance that squashes westernized assumptions of gender hierarchy and internalize a sense of women as equal and human in all contexts – not just the contexts where they don’t interact with you. Black women deserve it. And it undermines our forced separation from American society to make black spaces the spaces where inattentiveness to black women’s gendered concerns renders their powerful and necessary presence in those spaces “unsafe.”
As an aside, I want to highlight the awesome and (in progressive spheres) underrated Melissa Harris-Perry who’s had conversations about Marissa many times. I also want to offer a reminder of the human dimension embedded in laws like these and how they function not just as a consequence of abstract, distant lawmakers and laws that oppress black people on a merely systemic basis, but as a way in which individual white people affirmatively express their disregard for black life. The jury who was no doubt aware of her pregnancy, aware of her circumstances and aware of her premature birth nonetheless decided that she deserved 20 years in prison and made that decision in 12 minutes. When we discuss the inhumanity of these laws, there’s no reason to separate that discussion from the exhibited inhumanity of the white people that use such laws to reaffirm preexisting racial dynamics that they benefit from. It’s not a coincidence that white people are 354% more likely to be judged as innocent in Stand Your Ground cases when the “victim” belongs to a historic group that’s inherited the societal assumption of automatic guilt. It’s also not a coincidence that such an obvious injustice is a commonplace factor in a white supremacist society with a history and a present that’s never faced justice or correction for its general treatment of black people.
(hattip to the incredible Prison Culture, who linked that discussion a week or so ago. If you’ve never read her before, you should rectify that.)
Paul in KY
@Roger Moore: If she truly ‘feared for her life’, she should have popped him. IMO, you don’t shoot a firearm (in that situation) or display it, unless you seriously mean to use it.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: She should be able to use ‘self defense in my castle’ (assuming she was in her home)
Paul in KY
@Drexciya: Was wondering about this snippet in your post above:
‘To respond, black men as men need to construct more than rules that start and stop at “don’t hit women,” and there needs to be a general understanding that those roles were not intended for and are unfit for black people’s societal place. So I welcome black men who adopt – as their responsibility – an affirmative stance that squashes westernized assumptions of gender hierarchy and internalize a sense of women as equal and human in all contexts – not just the contexts where they don’t interact with you’
Wondering why you assert that “don’t hit women” is a ‘rule’ that is not germane to black people & their present circumstances?
KSE
I’m just wondering, where’s the NRA on this? Where are the gun manufacturers lining up to give her a guided tour of the factory, maybe present her with a brand-new pistol?